The global solar boom is over

In 2014, the world installed 40,134 MW of solar power. This brought us to a total installed capacity of 178,391 MW. How much is that? 1% of global demand. This sounds promising, until you realize that the exponential growth people talked about is over. In fact, the places that began installing solar first, have largely stopped. Exponential growth is frontpage news, collapse isn’t.

Based on the graph in the document, in 2010, Europe installed around 13,000 MW. In 2011, Europe installed 22,000 MW. In 2012, about 17,500 MW. In 2013, 10,500 MW. In 2014, Europe installed a mere 6,950 MW. In other words, we’re now down to less than 33% of what we installed in 2011.

The solar revolution you were promised has been put on hold. Germany and many other countries here in Europe are now phasing out their solar subsidies, because it puts such a strain on the electricity grid. The lack of subsidies means that Germany didn’t even reach its goal of installing at least 2,5 GW of capacity in 2014, instead it installed a mere 1.9 GW. The other form of renewable energy that is being installed on any meaningful scale is wind energy, which faces the same problems as solar energy, in that these are intermittent forms of energy.